The present invention is directed towards impedance matching circuits and more particularly, adaptive impedance matching circuits to improve transceiver operation in a variety of scenarios.
As more technology and features are incorporated into small packages, engineering teams must get more and more creative, especially in the face of lagging miniaturization of parts and components. One of the areas that engineers focus on is multipurpose circuitry or, circuitry that meets a variety of functions. A good example of this focus is with regards to antenna matching circuits within cellular telephone devices.
Cellular telephone devices have migrated from single cellular technology supporting devices to multi-cellular technology devices integrating a variety of other consumer features such as MP3 players, color displays, games, etc. Thus, not only are the cellular telephone devices required to communicate at a variety of frequencies, they are also subjected to a large variety of use conditions. All of these factors can result in a need for different impedance matching circuits for the antenna. However, by utilizing tunable components, a single matching circuit can be used under a variety of circumstances. Tunable matching circuits generally operate to adjust the impedance match with an antenna over a frequency range to maximize the output power. However, difficulties arise when attempting to tune the matching circuit for signal reception. What is needed in the art is an adaptive impedance matching module that can operate to optimize performance of both the transmitter and the receiver under a variety of circumstances. Further, what is needed is an adaptive impedance matching module that optimizes performance of the transceiver based on optimizing the operation in view of a figure of merit.